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“I can handle it,” I reassured him, looking up at him.“You can go inside, if you want.”
“Not a chance, darlin’.I’m with you,” Rick said softly.
“Okay, then.”
No point in pretending I hadn’t just come back from a date with Rick, so I took his hand and we walked toward Seb.
My ex-fiancé’s glare dropped to our joined hands and then snapped back up to my face.
It was odd, seeing him here.He almost belonged in another life.
I’d been here less than three weeks, but so much had happened that it felt like longer.
I looked at Seb and remembered our fight before I flew here, and the memory made me sad, but no longer in that gut-wrenching way it had at the time.
I’d fallen for him for the wrong reasons.I was so happy that he seemed to support me that I’d overlooked other things, like how his “support” was just a kind of control.
Once he had me where he wanted me, he’d betrayed my trust, and pissed all over my attempt at trying to secure my own shop space.
“Hi,” he began uncertainly, standing up.
It was so unlike him.He was normally smooth.Polished.He just looked sad, standing here on my cousin’s porch.
“What are you doing here?”
His mouth turned down.“You didn’t answer my calls.”
“And you didn’t think perhaps there was areasonfor that?”I demanded, keeping my voice low.
His gaze turned belligerent as he regarded Rick again, wariness playing over his features.“Who’s this?”
“Seb, this is Rick Callahan.Rick, Seb.”
Seb’s eyes flicked to the medal pinned to Rick’s jacket.“Pleasure,” he said, automatically so polite, but the words sounded hollow.
Rick inclined his head slightly but did not speak.
“Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”Seb asked, looking at me.
I considered this for a moment.
And I thought, ire rising inside me:Nope.He obviously hadn’t stopped to think about my feelings when he’d thrown that letter in the trash, so his meant less than nothing to me.
Even if it was just that one, that was enough for me to know who he was, inside.
I let go of Rick’s hand and folded my arms over my chest.“Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Rick,” I decided.
Seb went as pale as the white shirt he wore.“You can’t be serious.”
“I am, though.As serious as you were when you binned that letter.Did you stop and think about it, foranyamount of time?”
The look on his face turned ice cold.“I did it foryou.It was the wrong time—”
“The wrong time foryou!”I thundered, unable to keep quiet any longer.“I didn’t know you were planning for me to basically shut down my business and have babies with you!We’d never discussed it properly, and some of that is on me.With time to think on it, we weren’t a good fit then, and we aren’t now.”
“You cannot be serious,” he muttered, again.
“You didn’t have therightto decide what I should do with my life, Sebastian.”
